


The Pendragon Guide to How Not to Date

by mariana_oconnor



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bartender Merlin, Blind Date, F/M, M/M, Originally Posted on LiveJournal, Romantic Comedy, Student Arthur, Student Morgana, The Pendragon siblings are friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-08
Updated: 2008-12-10
Packaged: 2019-03-22 16:47:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13768329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mariana_oconnor/pseuds/mariana_oconnor
Summary: Modern day student AU. Still set in Britain. Morgana sends Arthur on some blind dates that don’t go quite according to plan





	1. Part the First – in which Morgana is loud, Arthur has no life and Uther doesn’t know anything.

**Author's Note:**

> I've been meaning to transfer all my old fic from my livejournal, and so it begins. This was written right at the beginning of the Merlin fandom in season 1, with all that entails. It also means it's about 10 years old now. Merlin was probably the fandom I was most prolific in, and this was the first fic I wrote. It's a lot silly and was written in a single day.

Sometimes Arthur wondered what had possessed him to live with Morgana. His step-sister had always been irritating and the fact that they had  _somehow_  (though through no fault of his own) ended up at the same university was definitely not a good enough reason to live together. But his father had bought the flat for them and insisted that both of them live in it so that his money did not go to waste. It did help that the flat was at least ten times better than any of the student housing in the area, but not much.  
  
If he were completely honest, Morgana was not that bad a flatmate: she picked up after herself, she cleaned the bathroom every other week and took all her hairs out of the plughole, she even washed up her own lunch dishes and made him a cup of tea after he’d finished one of his essay frenzies. It was just that, sometimes – like now, she was a little…  _loud_. There were times when he could swear that the wall between their rooms was made of paper: he could hear  _everything_.   
  
Seven o’clock in the morning was not the optimal time to be woken up, especially when you were an Arts student with a six hour week. Plus, there were some things Arthur could have done with never knowing about, a lot of things actually and his step-sister’s ownership of handcuffs was one of them. When Arthur said loud, he meant  _loud_.  
  
The rhythmic sawing noise from the adjacent room was speeding up and Arthur groaned, folding the pillow over his ears, but, somehow, Morgana’s voice defied muffling and he heard her moans quite clearly through the padding. It did not even manage to drown out Owain’s grunts of pleasure. Really, he decided, he needed to get a new pillow, and possibly a machine gun.  
  
The hearing was not even the worst part, he admitted to himself as blissful silence fell. The worst part of the whole thing was Morgana grinning at him across the breakfast table in the mornings as Owain made bacon and eggs (by far the best boyfriend she had ever had in Arthur’s opinion). Her grins could make him embarrassed even when he had nothing to be embarrassed about.  
  
That morning he glared at her over his coffee mug as Owain whistled to himself while prodding fried eggs. He always whistled after morning sex, Arthur had learnt. Even if he had not heard  _every sodding thing_  he would know that by now.  
  
“Did you sleep well?” Morgana asked with a wicked grin. She did not even pretend innocence, and somehow that made it worse.  
  
“Until about seven,” he replied as composedly as he could, “when  _something_  woke me up.” He refused to be cowed by her gaze but Owain spluttered a little and Arthur could see that the tips of his ears had turned red. Apparently her boyfriend was not as thick-skinned as Morgana, but Arthur had come to the conclusion from years of experience that there was no one as thick-skinned as Morgana.  
  
“How dreadful,” she said, affecting a look of horrified sympathy. “Do you have any idea what it was?”  
  
“None whatsoever – you weren’t doing anything at seven, were you?” She paused and Arthur made a mental note to mark another one to him on the tally stuck to the kitchen door.  
  
“Sorry, can’t help you…” she said. Then Owain turned around to deposit their breakfast on their plates. The two of them began a discussion about their first lecture of their day, at which Arthur automatically switched off.  _Scientists_ , he thought with affectionate venom. He settled for eating his bacon and eggs (and he had to talk to Morgana about keeping this one, because maybe the loud morning sex and the knowing grins over the table were worth it if he got  _this_  for his troubles). The sound of his name caught his attention and he looked up to see Morgana grinning mockingly at him.  
  
“But, of course,  _Arthur_  doesn’t start until… what time is it, again?” she asked, her voice sugary sweet.  
  
“Three,” he told her with a smug grin.  
  
“By which time I will have had,” she made a point of counting the hours on her fingers, “Five hours.” She sighed heavily. “I hate you, by the way.” He nodded with a smirk and snagged the newspaper as Owain got up.  
  
As Morgana was finishing up her coffee and pulling on her boots, the phone rang. Arthur grabbed it from the cradle and read the caller ID.  
  
“Bugger,” he announced with feeling.  
  
“Uther?” his step-sister asked, looking up at him from beneath the curtain of her hair, where she was crouched in the doorway. He nodded, staring at the phone acidly while his thumb hovered in between the answer and ignore keys. “Remember,” she told him as she and Owain headed for the front door, “Owain went home at half past ten, as he always does, and you were with us all the time.”  
  
“I know, Morgana,” he hissed at her, as though his father could somehow overhear the conversation although he had not answered the phone at the time. “I do know how to keep secrets from my own father.”  
  
“Good – then if he finds out I’ll know you did it on purpose,” she told him before the door banged shut behind her.   
  
He finally gave in and hit the answer button, grimacing as he brought the phone to his ear.  
  
“Hello father,” he said in as upbeat a voice as he could manage, thanking God for the coffee. If he had been any less awake, no doubt his father would have given him the third degree about his drinking habits again.  
  
“Arthur,” his father’s greeting was curt as always. “How are the essays going?”  
  
***  
  
He had cobbled together a meal by the time Morgana got back from her lectures and she smiled gratefully as she shuffled through the door.  
  
“No Owain?” he asked.  
  
“He’s got a lab report due on Wednesday,” she informed him, collapsing into her seat at the small kitchen table.  
  
“All the more for us, then,” he said, grabbing a fork.  
  
“Lasagne?” Morgana asked with a raised eyebrow. “ _You_  make lasagne?”  
  
“I found a recipe,” he replied with a shrug but she looked unconvinced and poked at the meal with her fork suspiciously.  
  
“It won’t kill you,” he protested.  
  
“So say  _you_ ,” she retorted, “I still remember the burgers you made.”  
  
“I was eleven!” Arthur said with annoyance.  
  
“I was sick for a  _week_ ,” Morgana reminded him. “They were  _raw_.”  
  
“They were brown on the outside.  _I_  didn’t know you were supposed to check the middle. Anyway, it’s beef. The French like it best raw.”  
  
“ _Please_  tell me you cooked it,” Morgana begged with a horrified expression, staring at her lasagne as though it were about to moo at her.  
  
“Of course I cooked it!” he snapped back, his patience reaching its limit. He stabbed down with his fork angrily. There was a moment of silence while Morgana looked across at him with sympathy.  
  
It was difficult to remember a time when he had not known Morgana. Although his father had only married her mother when they were ten (a short lived affair which had ended abruptly when her mother had run off with Uther’s personal assistant) they had grown up knowing each other, fighting and teasing. It was only ever at moments like this, where Morgana knew what was going through his head without his having to say anything, that he remembered just how well she knew him.   
  
“I take it from your charming manner that your father was having a go at your grades again.” He was always Arthur’s father, never hers, even though Uther had taken care of her after her mother had left for the Canary Islands with half of his money. But Morgana always called him ‘Uther’ or ‘ _your_  father’. He had never asked her about it, and he probably never would, but it was something he always noticed.  
  
“I got a 2:1 on my last essay,” Arthur told her with a shrug, looking up at her defiantly. He knew his face had gone blank, as it always did when they discussed his father’s influence in his life.  
  
“That’s good,” she said, her lips quirking into a genuine smile.  
  
“It’s not a first,” corrected Arthur, “and I need to be perfect in everything before I take over the family business.” He took a mouthful of lasagne as an excuse not to continue. The taste was a pleasant surprise: apparently throwing lots of things in at random did sometimes work.  
  
“You really need to tell him that you don’t want to run the family business, Arthur.” She said. Arthur didn’t answer. “And that’s not the only thing you need to tell him.”  
  
“He’s right though,” Arthur said, cutting through her point as fast as he could.  
  
“How?” Morgana looked horrified at the suggestion.  
  
“I could have got a first on that essay,” he answered. “I  _should_  have got a first on that essay. If I hadn’t gone out the night before it was due in I could have looked it over again.”  
  
“Don’t be ridiculous, Arthur,” his sister told him in her no nonsense tone. “You spent an entire  _week_  on that essay. I barely saw you for days. It counts towards what? One percent of this year?”  
  
“Two percent,” he corrected.  
  
“Wow, that’s going to destroy your whole degree,” She said in sarcastic horror. “So you got a harsh marker – it happens. Uther has no right to tell you that you need to work harder.”  
  
“You tell me I don’t work hard enough all the time,” he pointed out.  
  
“I’m a science student; you’re an Arts student – that’s how it works: I complain that you do nothing, you complain that I can’t string a sentence together with grammatical accuracy. Also, I live with you, I  _know_  you do work. Uther doesn’t know shit about it.”  
  
“He’s my father,” Arthur told her firmly.  
  
“That doesn’t mean he’s infallible.”  
  
“He sends his love by the way,” Arthur added, “and he’s pleased that Owain’s being a gentleman.”  
  
“Oh… he’s not that gentle,” Morgana allowed herself to be sidetracked, smirking a little as Arthur gave her his ‘must you?’ face.  
  
“I think I’ll just pretend you didn’t say that,” he said. Morgana’s smile increased and she began to eat her food.  
  
“You,” she said with determination, “need to get laid.”  
  
“We’ve had this discussion,” Arthur said with a sigh.  
  
“And I seem to recall your side of the argument was stupid.”  
  
“I don’t have the time,” he told her, trying to end the conversation there.  
  
“That’s not an excuse.”  
  
“No, it’s a reason. I don’t have time to go out, I don’t have time to find someone and I don’t have time to deal with the fall out…”  
  
“Then make time,” Morgana said, “you’re cooped up in the house all the time and the only people you talk to are Uther and I.”  
  
“I talk to Owain,” he protested, sitting up straighter in his seat.  
  
“He doesn’t count.”  
  
“I’ll tell him you said that, shall I?” He asked, trying to distract her, but that never worked.  
  
“You know what I mean.” She told him, stubbornly refusing to be redirected as he knew she would. “This lasagne is delicious, by the way.”  
  
“Thanks. But what if my father finds out?” he asked.  
  
“Are you planning on telling him?” she asked. He shook his head. “Then how is he going to find out? Not that it would matter if he did.”  
  
“Morgana…”   
  
“You’ll have to tell him sometime,” she said. “So you’re gay…” she paused, probably for dramatic effect, she did like to make a show of these things. “It’s not the end of the world, Arthur.”  
  
“Not yours, maybe. But his?”  
  
“He’ll have to deal with it. One day he’ll notice that you’ve never had a girlfriend.”  
  
Arthur declined to answer and focussed his attention onto his dinner again, glaring at it.  
  
“Come on, Arthur. You haven’t been out with anyone since that guy in first year that used to get drunk and throw up all over your floor.” She told him. “Look. I’ve got a few friends; I’ll set you up with one.”  
  
“No, Morgana,” he said, looking up in alarm. “I am not going on a blind date that you’ve set up for me.”  
  
“What’s the worst that could happen?” she asked.  
  
“I’m killed and left in a ditch,” Arthur replied with complete seriousness. He had met some of her friends. They varied between the subnormal and the criminally insane. There was no happy medium and the only thing they ever talked about was physics.   
  
“They’re nice people, look. It’ll just be one date, somewhere you choose, no strings, no pressure. One date with a nice guy, one evening where you get out of the house and you might even get a free meal out of it.”  
  
“I’m not the girl,” Arthur protested.  
  
“Hey, sometimes  _I_  pay for Owain’s dinner,” she said.  
  
“That’s because dad gives you shitloads of money.” She shrugged, unabashed at the allegation.   
  
“Look. Just try it. If it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out. If it does, then, great.”  
  
“Morgana.”  
  
“Arthur.” She replied, mimicking his tone exactly. “You can’t live by Uther’s rules your entire life.”  
  
“Because you’re so ready to tell him that you and Owain are sleeping together.”  
  
“That’s not the point.”  
  
“Hypocrite,” Arthur retorted.   
  
“So, are you going to say yes, or are you too much of a coward?” Morgana asked, taunting him.  
  
“I’m not scared!” Arthur protested.   
  
“Then that’s settled. Friday night, that’s after your next deadline, right? Where do you want to go: that place down the road, or somewhere in town?” Arthur gaped at her.  
  
And that was how he found himself  _not quite_  agreeing to go on a blind date with some friend of his step-sister, and no matter what he said she would not let him out of it.  
  
***


	2. Part the Second: in which Arthur is definitely not nervous, Merlin provides the alcohol and Tristan may or may not live in an igloo

Friday rolled around all too quickly for Arthur’s taste and no matter how much he glared at Morgana she just laughed. He knew that she had threatened Owain with no sex if her boyfriend told him anything about his date. He still did not know exactly why he was going, but he knew that he could not back out now. It had become an issue of pride, and it was at times like these that he wished Morgana did not know him quite as well.  
  
They were going to The Dragon down the road, because, as Arthur had pointed out to Morgana, this was a date but it was a date between two guys and he wanted to go to a pub not a sodding restaurant. She had shaken her head and asked him where the romance was in that.  
  
“You want me to get  _laid_ , Morgana,” he had said, “that doesn’t require romance.”  
  
“It can’t hurt,” she had said, and he had not had a reply to that.  
  
So he was standing in front of his mirror emphatically  _not_  doing his hair, nor was he worrying about what to wear. His red shirt would be fine… although the blue one was good too.  
  
There was the sound of a smothered laugh from the doorway and he turned around to glare at Morgana again. She looked suitably contrite for half a second before she could hold in her amusement no longer.  
  
“Honestly, Arthur… you’re such a girl!” she commented.  
  
“If you haven’t got anything constructive to say, then don’t say anything,” he said back, gritting his teeth. He felt enough of an idiot as it was without her laughing at him.  
  
“Wear the red,” she said, “it compliments your hair better… which is  _fine_  by the way, so stop fiddling with it.” He brought his hand down from his fringe guiltily. “It’s just a date, not the Spanish inquisition,” she said more gently, coming in to grab a jacket from the pile he had shoved onto the bed. He had a lot of clothes – so many he hadn’t even noticed before. God, he thought within the privacy of his own mind, he  _was_  a girl.  
  
“Here,” she handed him something made of brown suede. “You look hot; don’t worry about it.”  
  
“So, what’s this friend of yours like, anyway?” he asked, pulling on the jacket and looking at himself in the mirror again. She was right, he did look hot, not that he ever looked bad. “Morgana, I just want to know what you’ve got me into.” She began to smooth the material over his shoulders, fussing like his mother, or how he imagined his mother would have done had she survived his birth.  
  
“You’ll like him,” she said, giving an encouraging smile.  
  
“I think I’ll decide that for myself,” he retorted and she stuck her tongue out.  
  
“He’s tall, dark and handsome, and he’s not the type to blabber away at you. I know how you hate idiots.” He nodded. All in all, the mystery man did not sound too bad. “He’s got a  _killer_  arse as well.”  
  
“And his name? In case I have to ask everyone in the pub who he is,” Arthur prompted. They joined eyes for a second and he raised one eyebrow in a way that never failed to get him his way with his female tutors (and a couple of the male ones).  
  
“Tristan,” she said after a moment. “Tristan Lyons.”   
  
“ _Tristan?_ ” Arthur asked incredulously, his face screwing up in disbelief. “He sounds like an actor in an Australian soap.”  
  
“Arthur, give him a chance,” she chided, stepping away to glare at him more effectively. “He’s just as nervous as you are.”  
  
“I’m not nervous,” Arthur replied reflexively, and he wasn’t, because this was completely pointless. This was just another one of Morgana’s ridiculous ideas and no doubt it would all go horribly wrong as all her ideas did. You only got nervous when things were important and this, this pseudo date, was not important. Certainly, it was his first date (pseudo or not) in two years, since he had unceremoniously dumped the guy who got drunk and threw up on his floor (Kay, he remembered, and dammit if that did not sound like the name of an actor in an Australian soap as well). There was nothing to be nervous about; he had not even  _met_  this Tristan bloke. And if he was a tiny, microscopic bit nervous, it was probably in case this guy drugged and raped him.  
  
God he hoped he wasn’t a chemist – they probably had access to rohypnol, or GHB.  
  
“Why did I agree to this again?” he asked rhetorically, turning his best death glare on his own reflection.  
  
“Because you’re young, single and you want to enjoy yourself.” His eyes slipped to Morgana’s in the reflection as she turned, and he knew that even she did not believe that. She hesitated a second before giving in. “Okay, you’re doing it because I’m a manipulative bitch who wants to see you happy and relaxed and  _comfortable_. Is that such a bad thing?”  
  
When she put it like that he could not really argue so he simply shrugged with a sigh.  
  
“You should get going,” Morgana said, giving him a gentle shove towards the door. “He’ll be wearing black.”  
  
“You just want me to leave so you can shag Owain on the sofa.” She grinned, and pushed him more firmly towards the door. He thought about what he had just said for a moment and he turned back to her, horrified at the idea. “Oh god! Don’t shag Owain on the sofa.”  
  
“Who says I haven’t already?” She asked and Arthur had time to gape, goldfish like, at her before she pushed him down the corridor and out the front door, closing it behind him.  
  
“I will never be able to sit on that sofa again…” he muttered to no one.  
  
***  
  
The Dragon was full when he turned up and he stood in the doorway for a second, pulling himself together and wondering just what the hell he had got himself into, although the lovely visuals of Morgana and Owain and that sofa (the  _sofa!?_ ) had distracted him for a minute.  
  
After a couple of seconds of uncharacteristic hesitation, he strode over to the bar. He was Arthur Pendragon, for crying out loud, and no prissy little Soap boy called Tristan was going to cow him. He pulled himself into one of the stools and tried to catch the barman’s eye. He really needed a beer.  
  
The guy behind the bar was rushed off his feet, but he really did not seem all that competent at his job. He ran from one end of the bar to the other, taking orders, which, from the amused comments of the rest of the patrons, seemed never to be quite right, and he poured beer from tap slower than anyone Arthur had ever seen. No one seemed concerned by it, though, all of the regulars, as Arthur presumed they were, took it in their stride, answering his ridiculous grin with matching indulgent smiles.  
  
He was at the end of the bar, serving a group of excited girls with the sort of flirting that was only flirting because he did not know he was doing it, when he noticed Arthur staring at him and tapping impatiently on the counter. There was a quick grin and a slight nod of acknowledgement, but it still took him five minutes to get round to actually taking his order.  
  
“What can I get for you?” the bartender asked, seemingly popping up out of nowhere into Arthur’s line of sight.  
  
“I was beginning to think I was never going to get a drink,” Arthur said with a huff.  
  
“Oh, I get round to everyone sooner or later,” the man said smiling, totally unaffected by Arthur’s glaring. He was thrown a bit by that, no one was completely unaffected by his glares, he was bloody good at them. “Sorry, though. It’s a busy night.”  
  
“And you’ve spent half of it talking,” Arthur pointed out. The bartender was about his own age, but that was where the similarity between them ended. Where Arthur was blond and well-muscled (although Morgana loved to poke him in the stomach and tell him he was getting a spare tyre) the other man was thin, with a mop of dark hair that probably had not seen a brush in the last three years.   
  
“All part of the job,” he replied, and the grin did not fade from his face. “So what can I get you?”  
  
“A pint,” Arthur replied, curtly, turning to survey the clientele for his blind date.  
  
“Any preferences?” the bartender asked. Arthur shook his head before turning back, looking between the tables of people. “Waiting for someone?” he asked grabbing a glass and sticking it under the tap.  
  
“Yes.” Arthur replied before he realised what he was saying.  
  
“Male or Female?” The bartender asked.  
  
“Male,” Arthur shot him a quick look, but the man did not even bat an eyelid. Of course, there was no way he could know that it was a date, not from the limited information Arthur had given him.  
  
“What does he look like?” the man continued, placing the glass on the bar and waiting as Arthur fished in his pocket for his wallet. Arthur avoided his eyes desperately, shrugging. “You don’t know?” Arthur shrugged again, reminding himself that blind dates were nothing to be ashamed of, except they were.  
  
“Here,” Arthur said, holding out the money. The bartender reached out to take it and their hands brushed slightly before Arthur snatched his away.  
  
“Thanks,” the guy said, “I’m Merlin by the way.”  
  
“I didn’t ask,” Arthur replied. Merlin’s grin just grew.  
  
“I know,” he said, with a shrug of his own, “But I thought I’d tell you anyway.”  
  
“Right, thanks,” Arthur said, grabbing his pint and taking a sip.  
  
“What’s your name?” Merlin asked, standing patiently in front of him, although there were several other people who still needed serving. Arthur noticed that a barmaid had come out to join him and she was working far more efficiently that Merlin had been.  
  
“Why do you want to know?” Arthur asked, confused.  
  
“Don’t look so terrified,” Merlin told him with a laugh, “I’m not a crazed stalker, it’s just, if your friend comes in looking for you and asks, I can direct him your way.” Arthur nodded, feeling a little sheepish, although he could not really say why.  
  
“Right… yes, I’m Arthur, Arthur Pendragon,” he replied with a nod. “And his name is Tristan… something.”  
  
“Well, Arthur Pendragon,” Merlin said, giving him a mocking little bow. “If I see a Tristan Something, I’ll be sure to point him your way.” Arthur stared at him, unsure whether he should glare at the obvious teasing, or thank the dark haired man for offering to help.  
  
“Right… well, thanks I suppose.” Merlin just smiled, before disappearing off to serve another customer.  
  
Arthur pulled himself together, taking another sip of his pint, before heading over to a small table in the corner of the main room. He had only been in this pub twice before, and both times he had been terrifically drunk at the end of a lengthy bar crawl, but he really did not remember that bartender. He must have been new, which would explain how crap he was at his job as well. He sighed. Apparently he had been stood up, on a blind date, by a friend of Morgana’s. That was beyond humiliating.  
  
He watched the people coming in and out of the bar with idle curiosity. There were a few couples, a group of students who seemed to be from one of the sports teams, probably rugby given their varying states of dress and the fact that at least half of them were in drag. One of them waved at him and he thought maybe he had seen the guy in a tutorial or a lecture, before realising he had done a presentation with him last year. In Arthur’s defence, the lipstick really did change his entire appearance, as did the long blonde wig.  
  
He had been waiting another five minutes and was just about ready to call the whole thing off, go home to Morgana and give her the required I told you so speech when a tall man, dressed entirely in black, huge buckled boots on his feet that looked as though they might have steel toecaps in and a pair of sunglasses that must have made it impossible to see in the less than brilliantly lit pub, walked in. He crossed over to the bar and leaned over to talk to the barmaid, a smiling young black woman. She looked puzzled for a moment before turning and calling to her right. Arthur could tell that she was asking Merlin something. The male bartender looked the guy up and down before sweeping his eyes round the entire bar, as soon as they landed on Arthur he quirked a grin before pointing over at him.  
  
Great, Arthur thought to himself as the juggernaut of a man turned to walk towards him, this was apparently Tristan and he was going to kill Morgana, or maybe just steal all her condoms.  
  
“Hi,” he said, his smile more than a little forced, he had to admit. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Merlin’s face, full of barely concealed amusement, as he held out his hand. Tristan just looked at it until Arthur let it fall uselessly to his side. “Did you not want a drink?” He tried. There was no response. “So, Tristan… what do you do?”  
  
“Philosophy,” Tristan said, his voice monotone.  
  
“Right… I thought you might be a physicist, what with knowing Morgana and all.” There was an uncomfortably long pause before Tristan managed to bring himself to respond. Arthur wondered whether he was just so slow it took that long for the words to get from his brain to his mouth, or whether he had hoped that Arthur would break first.  
  
“First year,” was the long awaited answer, and Arthur supposed that that would have to do. He took a deep gulp from his pint and looked at the reflection of the bar in the window next to him. Tristan stared at him, at least Arthur  _thought_  he was staring at him, with the sunglasses on Arthur was not sure where he was looking. He obviously wasn’t blind: he had managed to find the bar and Arthur, but there did not seem to be any reason for the shades.   
  
Neither of them said anything for a good few minutes. Finally Arthur caved and asked another question. He was not going to have Morgana tell him that it was his fault that the date had failed – if this was even a date, did it count if two people sat at the same table but did not communicate in any way?  
  
“Where do you come from, originally?” he asked, usually he could tell roughly by regional accents, but Tristan had not exactly said much to give him clues.  
  
“North,” was Tristan’s only response. North, very descriptive. So the man came from somewhere between here and the North Pole. Morgana had been right when she said he did not babble. There was definitely no babble here; it was a babble free zone. It was also devoid of any conversation whatsoever. Arthur almost expected to see tumbleweed rolling across the table. He looked over at the bar and caught Merlin’s eye again; honestly, did the man have nothing better to do than spy on his rapidly-turning-into-a-not-date?  _Talk to him_ , the bartender was mouthing at him, much to the amusement of his co-worker. Arthur just glared in response, trying to convey that he  _had_  tried talking to him, but it was about as effective as holding a conversation with a door, and that Merlin should mind his own bloody business. He was not sure that he got it all across, but Merlin chuckle before returning to work so he counted it as a win.  
  
“Do you like it up there?” Arthur asked. He had a sudden image of Tristan standing in the middle of the North Pole surrounded by polar bears and looking just as apathetic and unimpressed as he did right now. The silence that spread out after his question gave him plenty of time to question whether polar bears lived in the South Pole or the North Pole, and add in details like an igloo in the background, and an assortment of Santa’s elves dancing round him.   
  
“Yes.” Tristan answered, and Arthur was rapidly coming round to the idea that the man’s brain was just not large enough for anything more than monosyllabic answers. What Morgana had thought he would see in him was anyone’s guess.  
  
“Good,” he said with a sigh, lapsing into silence again. Maybe Tristan was some sort of robot Morgana had created with her science geek friends in order to torture him. His face did not twitch a muscle, he did not seem to want to drink and his voice was not dissimilar to that of Arthur’s father’s sat nav. They sat again, for a good few minutes and Arthur was pretty much ready to declare the date the worst one ever in the history of all dates, well, at least in his experience. However, since his experience included people throwing up all over his floor, and his bed (though Morgana did not know about that part) and his date snogging random guys who weren’t him in toilets (another thing he had not told Morgana) then he felt that he was a fairly decent authority on the subject.  
  
He might not have been on many dates, at least not since secondary school where he was reliably informed he had overcompensated by going out with as many girls as possible, but those he had been on had been bad.  
  
“Look,” he said after another two minutes of silence. “Anyone can see that you don’t want to be here, to be honest, I don’t want to be here. I’m really just here to prove a point. So, why don’t we agree that this is going terribly and get completely plastered?”  
  
As soon as the words left his mouth Tristan stood up, and Arthur was once again reminded of how  _tall_  the guy was. He towered over the smaller man, and he was completely shadowed by him. Tristan’s face remained impassive as he turned on his heel and walked out of the door.  
  
“Right,” Arthur said to the empty seat across from him, “bye then.” He downed the dregs of his pint and stood up himself, but rather than walking to the door he strode back to the bar.  
  
This time Merlin went to him as soon as he caught his eye.  
  
“You ballsed that up, didn’t you,” the barman said, with a frown, handing Arthur a pint before the words had barely had time to leave his lips. “Do you enjoy being an enormous prat, or what?” He asked as he snatched the money out of Arthur’s hand and walked quickly down to the other end of the bar.   
  
“I…” Arthur started, but there was no one to listen to him.  
  
He drank his pint slowly, trying and failing to catch Merlin’s eye repeatedly. For some reason the young man seemed to be avoiding him, but Arthur could not, for the life of him, imagine why.  
  
Gradually the night slowed down, and Arthur ordered another pint from the barmaid, whose name, he learned from the badge on her chest, was Gwen. She smiled at him serenely as she pulled his pint, but hurried off again to collect empties from the now almost deserted tables.   
  
“I thought this was a busy night,” he commented as Merlin passed him by again, looking busy although now there was next to no one to serve, just a couple of older men down at the end of the bar and the group of giggly girls in the corner, all of which had drinks already. Merlin ignored him. “Look… what’s wrong with you?” he demanded. “Earlier you were falling over yourself to be friendly, now it’s like you’re your own evil twin or something.”  
  
Merlin turned to him, eyeing the half finished pint in his hand warily.  
  
“How much have you had?” he asked with a small smile. Arthur looked down.  
  
“Not that much,” he said with a shrug. “I’m not drunk.” Merlin nodded. “So, tell me why you’ve decided you hate me.”  
  
“I should…” Merlin gestured to the men at the other end of the bar. Arthur followed his wave, but there did not seem to be any pressing matter down there.   
  
“Merlin,” he said, glaring.  
  
“Look, I just don’t see why you had to be so rude to the guy,” Merlin said, finally snapping. His eyes flashed and Arthur drew back, surprised.   
  
“I wasn’t rude,” he said.  
  
“You don’t want to be here, you’re just here to prove a point?” Merlin said, parroting his own words back to him, and when he re-examined them they did seem a little… harsh.  
  
“He wasn’t even talking to me,” Arthur pointed out, defending himself, and wondering why he had even been worried about the opinion of some idiot bartender who had no impact on his life whatsoever apart from to provide him with much needed alcohol.  
  
“Maybe he was nervous,” Merlin replied. “I mean, it was a blind date. Everybody’s nervous on a blind date, except Mr I’m so bloody perfect, apparently.” Arthur gaped at him, before remembering to keep his mouth closed.   
  
“He barely spoke five words to me from when he came in the door,” Arthur continued.  
  
“He could have been shy,” Merlin said, “maybe he would have opened up if you gave him a chance.”  
  
“He didn’t look shy,” said the blond, and even he knew that response was stupid.  
  
“And you can tell everything from appearances,” Merlin said sarcastically. “I mean, you’re not exactly hard on the eyes, but you aren’t half a prat.”  
  
“I thought he didn’t want to be there,” Arthur protested.  
  
“You thought  _you_  didn’t want to be there,” Merlin replied, but he did not move away again, just stood, his hands braced on the counter, wide apart, watching Arthur watching him.   
  
“And those sunglasses,” Arthur said after a moment. Merlin paused, and opened his mouth.  
  
“They might have...” he began, but half way through his sentence he broke into a reluctant grin. “Okay, so those were stupid.” Arthur grinned back, feeling a small swell of triumph at the back of his brain. This conversation, this whole situation, was bizarre, but somehow he was okay with that. He should have been back in the flat trying to finish off his work, but he did not even feel the slightest guilt.  
  
“Thank you…”  
  
“It still doesn’t mean you should have chucked him out like that,” Merlin added, lifting one hand to wag a finger under Arthur’s nose like. “So, why were you out on a blind date anyway?” He asked, falling back into the easy conversation spiel of earlier. “You don’t exactly look like you need to hide your appearance from people.”  
  
“How did you know it was a blind date?” Arthur asked. The question had been niggling at the back of his mind for the past few minutes, throughout their conversation. “I can’t imagine Mr Monosyllable told you.”  
  
“You did,” Merlin replied with a sly smile. While Arthur stared at him in befuddlement, Gwen plonked a tray of glasses down on the counter and Merlin began to gather them up without missing a beat.   
  
“I did not.” He said, quickly retracing their conversation in his mind although he was  _sure_  he had not said anything of the sort.  
  
“Yes, you did.” Merlin said, his back to Arthur as he transferred the glasses to the back of the bar. “It was pretty obvious. I mean – the way you’re dressed, the way you were looking round the bar when you got here, but you didn’t know who you were looking for.”  
  
“What’s wrong with the way I dress?” Arthur asked, a little affronted by them comment, and Merlin laughed.  
  
“There’s nothing wrong with it,” he assured the customer. He paused to look down at Arthur’s body. “Nothing at all. You look great, but… it’s clear that you’re dressed up for someone, and adding that to the rest, it wasn’t exactly a study date with someone you’ve only contacted by email.” Arthur frowned, but had to concede the point. Looking down at his clothes he supposed he was dressed a little better than other people in the bar. Merlin himself was only wearing a blue t-shirt and jeans.   
  
“I should be going,” he said, although he felt a little disappointed. Merlin nodded, smiling slightly. He had only stayed to tell the bartender that he was being a bastard, and apparently, that was unnecessary, he sighed and put a fiver down on the bar. Merlin’s eyebrows shot up his forehead.  
  
“What’s that for?” he asked. Arthur just shrugged, feeling a little embarrassed.  
  
“Being an idiot,” he said, “and stopping this night from being a complete disaster.” Merlin grinned at him then, and Arthur shifted uncomfortably under his gaze. That had not been the kind of thing he did usually. He tended to just go into bars, drink and then leave, he did not have conversations with the people who served his alcohol and he definitely did not tip them more than the price of a drink, especially when they were annoying opinionated arseholes who called him a prat.  
  
He turned to go before he could make a bigger fool of himself, and hurried out of the door. It was later than he had thought, and when he got back into the flat, Owain and Morgana were curled up on the sofa in one of their hideously saccharine moments (but at least they weren’t defiling the furniture) watching some brainless action film.  
  
“How did it go?” Owain asked him, and he noticed that Morgana was asleep. After a moment of silent thanks to God that he would not have to put up with her questions, he rolled his eyes.  
  
“About as well as I expected,” he replied with a shrug. He and Owain had a curious half friendship. He was never certain whether his sister’s boyfriend actually liked him, or just put up with him because of Morgana; they seemed to get on well enough, but it was always a little strained when it was just the two of them.  
  
“Did you kill him?” the man on the sofa asked, and Arthur smirked a little.  
  
“No, just bruised his ego a little, I think.” He sighed and leant back against the wall. “Did you know he didn’t talk?” he asked. Owain shrugged, careful not to wake Morgana who was beginning to drool on his shirt a little. It was nice to see that she was still human.  
  
“I haven’t really spoken to him much; he just tends to hang around at the back of the room.” Arthur nodded. Morgana probably didn’t know him very well either; she had probably just been around her entire group of friends and inquired as to who was gay or bi and single. He sighed.  
  
“I’ll keep her off your back,” Owain promised and Arthur nodded gratefully.   
  
“Thanks,” Arthur replied, “I’m going to bed.” He headed for the door, but paused as he pushed it open. “Try to be a little quieter in the morning, okay?” Owain just chuckled.  
  
***


	3. Part the Third: in which Morgana is determined, Arthur is a nice guy and Lancelot gets a free drink

Morgana’s quest did not end there, however. After hearing how tremendously her first ill conceived attempt at matchmaking had gone she was determined to try again.  
  
“You said once,” Arthur pointed out, and Owain was nodding with him as they sat on the sofas waiting for her soap to finish so that she would let them watch something decent.   
  
“No… I said that if it went terribly then you wouldn’t have to do it again and…”she began, watching the television even while she spoke. Arthur had no idea how she managed to keep up with storyline (although, it wasn’t exactly Shakespeare) while taking part in their conversation, but somehow she always managed, shushing him and Owain whenever it got to a scene that she really had to watch.  
  
“What part of  _he didn’t talk_  do you not understand?” Arthur asked incredulously, and she merely shrugged.  
  
“It lasted more than five minutes,” Morgana explained, “you didn’t end up dead in a ditch, therefore it wasn’t terrible, and anyway you don’t  _have_  to go out again. But you said yourself that it was nice to get out of the house.” He had, it was true, in a weak moment, made a comment to that effect but it was highly unfair of her to hold that against him. He had said it two nights ago when he had been struggling through writing a presentation for a class and he had almost been climbing the walls. “Come  _on_ , Arthur.” She cajoled, turning from the angst-laden family scene on the television to look at him. “One night out a week is barely anything, you’re a student – live dangerously  
  
“It’s not just a night out, though,” he pointed out, “it’s a sodding date and I don’t want to be subjected to your idea of a good date again.”  
  
“Look, this one’s not like Tristan. He’s really nice, isn’t he Owain?” Behind her Owain gave a short nod and it was that more than anything that let Arthur’s guard down.   
  
“Does he talk?” he asked.  
  
“Yes,” she assured him, “but not too much.”  
  
“If he can string a sentence together he would be a marked improvement,” Arthur muttered, and Morgana seemed to take this as a decision that he would go.   
  
“Brilliant, Friday night again, Lancelot will be so pleased,” She beamed and Arthur felt his jaw drop open.  
  
“Lance…a… lot?” he asked drawing the name out slowly. “Do any of your friends have normal names?” There was no reply and he realised that she had started texting. “What are you doing? I never said I was going!” Morgana did not even look up. “Morgana. I’m not going.”  
  
“I already texted him to say you were,” she said, finally looking up, all innocent.  
  
“Then text him back and say I’ve changed my mind,” he demanded.  
  
“I can hardly do that,” she said reproachfully. “Look, you’ll like him. I promise you.”  
  
“I’ve never heard that before,” he replied, his voice laden with sarcasm.  
  
“You don’t even  _know_  the guy,” Morgana argued. “At least give him the courtesy of  _meeting_  him before you decide you hate him.” Arthur fumed silently, and he could see matching smirks on Morgana’s and Owain’s faces. It looked like he was going on another blind date then, unless he stood the guy up, which was unlikely.  
  
***  
  
“You know your mother and I met at university,” Uther told him over the phone the next day. There were a million different meanings underlying that simple sentence and Arthur could hear them all and half of them were questions he really did not want to answer.  
  
“I know, father,” he said, deliberately taking it at face value. Perhaps, if he played dumb, he could avoid the unpleasant relationship talk a while longer.  
  
“So, any beautiful young women crossed your path?” his father continued. It seemed the universe had decided that it was destroy Arthur’s sanity week. First Morgana signed him up on another blind date, now his father had started not so subtly asking about his love-life. He wondered what response he would get if he said ‘actually, father, I’m gay and I’m going on a blind date with a man tomorrow because Morgana has decided I can’t find one on my own.’ However, no matter how annoying Uther was, the idea of listening to him have a heart attack down a phone line was not appealing.  
  
“No one special,” he managed to say, resorting to his answer of choice whenever his father asked him that question.   
  
“Well, if you don’t get out there, you’ll never know,” Uther continued. “Not that you should abandon your studies.”  
  
“Of course not, father,” Arthur’s brain switched off and he began to answer automatically as his father started to go on again about how important his studies were. But at least he was not asking him to get a girlfriend any more.  
  
***  
  
Arthur had failed spectacularly at finding any way out of the enforced blind date by Friday. Except leaving the poor man stranded in the pub by himself, and he felt sure that Merlin would have a thing or two to say about that. So he ended up dressing himself up again and dragging himself down to The Dragon once more, although he was not dreading the date quite as much as he had been the week before.  
  
As soon as he walked in the door Merlin caught sight of him and offered him a huge smile, which Arthur returned in spite of himself. Morgana’s description had been even vaguer this week –  _sort of curly hair, sort of tallish_  – and he knew that he had no hope of finding the man, Lancelot Dulaque, without a bit of direction.  
  
So he sat down at the bar and Merlin got to him immediately: apparently having conversed with him made him more efficient.  
  
“Another blind date, huh?” Merlin asked as he poured his pint. The bar was not as busy as it had been when Arthur came in the time before, and his movements were a lot less urgent, not that Arthur had thought that possible. The blond nodded with a weary smile. “This one got a name?”  
  
“Lancelot,” he replied, raising one eyebrow and Merlin quirked a smile.  
  
“Lancelot?” he repeated and Arthur nodded. “Right, well… Gwen?” He turned and caught the other bartender as she hurried past. She looked between them curiously for a second. “You haven’t seen a man called Lancelot, have you?” She paused for a second before nodding. “Really? Arthur here’s supposed to be meeting him.” The woman turned to look at Arthur and her face fell a little.   
  
“He’s over there,” she said with a nod and both Arthur and Merlin turned to look where she had indicated. Arthur was pleasantly surprised. Where Tristan had been imposing and a little ridiculous to look at, Lancelot was really quite attractive. Perhaps he had been too quick to dismiss Morgana’s idea. Of course, there was always a possibility that he had some sort of disastrous personality flaw, so he might have to reserve judgement. He turned back to Merlin with a small grin, but the barman’s usual smile was missing.   
  
“Once more unto the breach,” he muttered, and that managed to raise a half hearted smile, but it faded quickly, and Merlin wished him luck before hurrying away down the bar. “Right…” Arthur said to himself. He would never understand that man.  
  
He walked over to the table where Lancelot was sitting, drinking a pint himself, and offered his hand by way of greeting.  
  
“Lancelot?” he asked, and the dark haired man looked up.   
  
“Yes,” he answered with a slightly nervous smile, “I expect that makes you Arthur.”  
  
“It does indeed.” Arthur lowered himself into a chair and gave his most charming smile. So far so good. “Anyway, Morgana has been completely impossible about the whole thing and told me nothing about you, so. Where do you come from?”   
  
“Kent,” Lancelot replied, “though my father’s from France. And you?”  
  
“Cornwall, via London, but my mother was Welsh, so half my family insists that I’m Welsh really.” That raised a smile, and they fell into an easy conversation about families and the stupid things they did. Arthur even managed to relax, which surprised him, and he was beginning to think that Morgana might be right when he noticed that Lancelot had taken to staring over his shoulder at something. He twisted round and caught sight of nothing interesting, just the bar. Gwen was serving a couple of customers and Merlin was down the other end trying to tell an aggressive student that he had had enough.  
  
When he turned back, Lancelot was blushing a little and avoiding his gaze, as though he had been caught doing something wrong.  
  
Arthur dismissed it, and continued in his diatribe against the lecturer he had had earlier that day, who had told them all in no uncertain terms, that they would fail miserably. He would have forgotten the incident entirely, except it kept on happening. He would look up and find that Lancelot was staring past him. He did not think that he was being that boring. He sighed and lifted his pint to his lips only to find that he had emptied it five minutes ago.  
  
“Want another one?” he asked, drawing Lancelot’s attention back to him. There was a moment of blank incomprehension before his date realised what he was saying.  
  
“Uh, thanks…” he reached for his wallet, but Arthur waved him down.   
  
“My round,” he said with a grin and Lancelot gave him a weak smile.   
  
Arthur had a feeling something had gone wrong, only he could not quite put his finger on it. They had been talking and then Lancelot had just drifted off, as though Arthur weren’t even there. He pulled himself up to the bar, frowning as he tried to work out whether he had said anything particularly prattish.  
  
“Two pints,” he said as Merlin came up to him, and he started to pour them.  
  
“How’s it going?” Merlin asked as he placed the first full glass down in front of him.  
  
“I thought well, but…” he trailed off and fished a fiver from his wallet.   
  
“Don’t tell me you were arrogant and rude to this one as well,” Merlin said, accepting the money, but the smile he had put on was a little forced.  
  
“I’m not arrogant,” Arthur protested, frowning more deeply.  
  
“Sure you aren’t,” Merlin replied, but Arthur knew he was humouring him. He glared and took the second pint as Merlin placed it on the counter. The bartender looked over his shoulder to where he and Lancelot were sitting and his mouth fell open slightly. “I don’t think it was you,” he said quietly, and Arthur turned to follow his gaze.  
  
Gwen had gone to pick up their empty glasses, which Arthur had left on the table and she and Lancelot had fallen into a conversation. Both of them were smiling at each other like there was no one else in the room.  
  
“Bugger,” Arthur said with feeling and he felt Merlin lean over to pat him on the arm. “But he’s  _gay_ ,” he muttered under his breath.  
  
“Apparently not so much,” Merlin replied, and although he was sympathetic, Arthur could tell that he was highly amused by the situation. He turned to glare at him and found that the thin man was grinning at him as widely as he had done at the beginning of the evening.   
  
“Glad to see my dismal track record was enough to cheer you up,” he said bitterly, but the words had no venom to them. He felt as though he should feel betrayed, or angry, but he had only met the man a couple of hours ago and while they had got along well, it had not been love at first sight (not that Arthur believed in that sort of thing anyway). He sighed.  
  
“You’re terrible at dates,” Merlin said, not even bothering to smother his amusement.   
  
“You can’t make an assumption like that!” Arthur protested.  
  
“Really?” Merlin asked, “Because 100% of the dates I’ve seen you go on have been appalling.”  
  
“Two hardly gives you enough information to base a hypothesis on,” and Arthur was cringingly aware that he sounded like Morgana right there. That was what happened when you lived with science students. They infected you and you ended up talking like them. He shuddered. “I mean, how do you know it’s not just coincidence, and the people I ended up going on the dates with were the ones who were terrible at them?”  
  
“You’re right,” Merlin admitted, nodding, and Arthur smirked. “I haven’t got a large enough test sample. So, have you ever been on a date before?”  
  
“Of course!” Arthur said, quickly.  
  
“Did it go well?” Merlin asked. Arthur looked at him for a second, with his mouth open before drawing himself up and huffing slightly under his breath. “I should take Lancelot his drink, and… tell him…” he trailed off.   
  
“Right,” Merlin said, giving him a small chuckle. “Tell him Gwen gets off in ten minutes tonight,”  
  
“He probably already knows,” Arthur said glumly, before turning back to the table and walking over. Gwen had left to pick up more glasses from around the other tables, but Lancelot was still staring after her, smiling like an idiot.  
  
“Here,” Arthur said quietly, placing the beer down on the mat. Lancelot jerked round, guiltily. “So, you’re bi?” he asked and Lancelot flushed a dark red colour, looking down at his drink. “It’s fine… look. It was a blind date: the chances of it working out were a million to one.” There was a lengthy pause.  
  
“I should pay you,” Lancelot said suddenly, standing up to look Arthur in the eye, “for the beer.”  
  
“Don’t worry about it,” Arthur insisted.  
  
“But-” Lancelot began.  
  
“It’s nothing… look, Merlin says that Gwen gets off in ten minutes. I think you should probably be on a date with her, not me, don’t you?” Lancelot’s eyes widened and he nodded dumbly.   
  
“Thank you,” he said, and Arthur just shrugged helplessly. There was little else he could have done in the circumstances. He could have made a fuss, or got angry, but Lancelot was a nice guy, and Gwen seemed reasonable enough. It was hardly their fault they had hit it off when he was supposed to be on a date with Arthur.  
  
Lancelot gave him a last grateful look before hurrying off and Arthur looked down at the table for a second. Sitting there on his own did not feel very tempting, and he had a distinct urge to get drunk, so he turned on his heel and walked back to the bar.  
  
“You’re a good guy,” Merlin told him with a smile as he perched back on a bar stool. Arthur just glared at him and proceeded to down his pint. “A good guy who can drink like a fish.”  
  
“Whiskey,” Arthur said, and Merlin obliged with a grin.  
  
“You barely knew him,” he pointed out and Arthur nodded in agreement.  
  
“Not exactly an ego boost, though.”  
  
“Not exactly like you  _need_  an ego boost,” Merlin retorted, sliding the whiskey over to him. “You’re not planning on getting completely wasted are you? I really don’t want to throw you out.”  
  
“Nah.” Arthur assured him.  
  
“So,” Merlin asked, watching Arthur sip at the whiskey, not even hissing as it burnt its way down his throat. “Why are you doing this?”  
  
“Drinking whiskey?” Arthur looked up in confusion. “I just got ditched by my date for a  _girl_ ,” Merlin smirked.  
  
“That’s not what I meant,” the dark haired man grabbed a couple of glasses from under the bar and began to polish them as another bartender, an older man, came out and began to serve the customers. “Why are you going on blind dates?” Arthur considered the question for a moment.  
  
“I’m not really sure,” he admitted, sighing and leaning his forearms against the bar. He had been asking himself the same question ever since Morgana came up with the idea; somehow she managed to manipulate him into everything. “It’s just, Morgana.”  
  
“Morgana?” Merlin asked, walking a few steps down to take another order.   
  
“My sister… step-sister,” Arthur explained, “and my flatmate. She decided that I’m not  _enjoying_  myself enough.”  
  
“So she sent you on two terrible blind dates?” Merlin asked incredulously, offering a smile to the new customer as he handed over the money. He looked around and there was no one else waiting to be served, so he slipped back down to Arthur again. “That seems a little counterproductive.”  
  
“She doesn’t think so,” he said with a sigh.  
  
“And you didn’t think to say no?” Merlin asked.  
  
“Of course I did!” Arthur said, “it’s just… she sometimes has difficulty hearing certain words. No being one of them.” Merlin laughed.  
  
“I know the type,” he said with sympathy. “I’ve got a friend, Will; he can manipulate me into  _anything_  because he’s known me  _forever_.” Arthur nodded.  
  
“So, other than pimping you out, what’s Morgana like?” Merlin asked cheekily.  
  
“Annoying,” Arthur replied, taking a longer sip from his Whiskey, “she and her boyfriend, Owain, are all over each other,  _all the time_. And she knows things about me before I tell her. It’s irritating.”  
  
“Your sister’s psychic?” Merlin quirked an eyebrow and Arthur smiled despite himself.  
  
“No, she just knows me too well. She knew I was gay almost before I did.” He remembered, chuckling at the memory. “She told me it was obvious because she had never caught me staring at her breasts.” Merlin laughed out right at that, and Arthur found himself joining in. He had never told that story to anyone, Morgana was the only person whom he had ever told he was gay and she had related the story to Owain, with a great deal of embellishment. He had been so embarrassed at the time, but had tried to cover it up with wounded pride; it felt odd to be laughing at his eighteen year old self now.   
  
“She sounds fun,” Merlin said absently, pouring himself a glass of water. “What about you?”  
  
“Am I fun?” Arthur asked, confused.  
  
“No, just in general, what about you? What do you do? What do you like to do? Why did Morgana feel that the only way to get you out of the house was to send you on the worst blind dates known to man?”  
  
“You ask a lot of questions,” Arthur replied.  
  
“So I’ve been told,” Merlin responded. “Gaius, my uncle, tells me it’s a sign of latent genius…”  
  
“It must be very latent,” Arthur said with a grin. Merlin rolled his eyes.  
  
“Like I haven’t heard that one before,” he paused surveying Arthur quietly for a minute. “Okay, so you want to be difficult. How about this: a question for a question, an answer for an answer. You ask me something, I’ll ask you something. That seems fair.”  
  
“What makes you think I want to know about you?” Arthur asked.  
  
“Because I’m wonderful, charming and handsome,” Merlin replied quickly, smiling like an idiot. “My turn.”  
  
“Wait a second, that wasn’t a question!” Arthur cried, trying to sound outraged through the smile that he could not quite get rid of.  
  
“Yes, it was. Now… my turn. You said that Morgana was your step-sister, which parents? Your mother, her father or the other way round?”  
  
“My father, her mother,” Arthur replied without even thinking. He watched Merlin for a moment as the bartender nodded to himself, filing away the information before he realised that he was vaguely interested in finding out about him. He ad nothing better to be doing, anyway. “Okay… fine, I’ll play your little game.”  
  
“No wonder Morgana managed to get you on those dates,” Merlin told him smugly, “You fold like cheap paper.” Arthur glared at him, which only prompted the irritating barman to dissolve into laughter.  
  
“If you’ve quite finished,” Arthur said, raising one eyebrow. “Have you ever heard of a hair brush?” Merlin’s hand went up to his hair immediately, mussing it up a bit more.  
  
“Yes, but I prefer the dishevelled look,” he replied. “When I brush my hair I look stupid.”  
  
“Stupider than usual?” Arthur inquired.  
  
“You’ve had your question,” Merlin told him firmly, “My turn. What do you want to do when you leave university?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Arthur said with a shrug. “My father wants me to take over the family business.”  
  
“That wasn’t my question,” Merlin told him in teasing reprimand. “I asked what  _you_  wanted to do.” Arthur looked at him for a moment and opened his mouth to say of  _course_  he wanted to run the family business, why shouldn’t he? What right did Merlin have to suggest that he did not? But the words would not come out. He sat there, silent for a moment. “Come on,” Merlin said, “you’ve got to have some dream or other.”  
  
“I’m… not sure,” Arthur said quietly, “travel the world, maybe. Or try and save it. I thought about joining the army for a little while.”  
  
“Because going around with a gun is really saving the world,” Merlin commented. Arthur shot him a rueful grin and he capitulated. “Travelling sounds fun. I’d like to do it myself. I always wanted to go to the Far East, walk on the Great Wall of China and eat a real curry in India. Sleep in one of those hotels in Tokyo where your room is as big as a coffin.”  
  
“Has anyone ever told you that you talk too much?” Arthur asked, aware that he was throwing away a question, but not really caring too much.  
  
“All the time,” Merlin replied, still smiling. “But I don’t listen.” He paused for a minute, studying Arthur intensely. “Has anyone ever told you that you are a prat?  _Other than me_.” He added the last part quickly as Arthur opened his mouth to reply.  
  
“Morgana has a couple of times, but no one else really.” He smiled and decided to think carefully about his next question. A quick look down at his glass told him that it was empty. “Can I have another beer? And that’s not my question, by the way.” Merlin grinned and grabbed a pint glass from behind him. Arthur watched his hands on the tap and the glass carefully. His fingers were long and pale, like the rest of him, and Arthur almost shuddered as he watched them slide down the pump. “What do you want to do – with your life?” he asked and Merlin looked up.  
  
“Medical research,” he replied promptly, “I’m a bio-chemist at the University,” Arthur’s eyes widened. “Yeah, this isn’t my entire life, you know. I just do this to earn money to keep me in the manner to which I have become accustomed,” he put on a posh voice, not unlike Arthur’s own and the Arts student found himself chuckling even as he reeled at the revelation. He had not thought that Merlin might be a student, although it made sense. He did not have a local accent and he was around the right age, but if had not crossed his mind. “No need to look so shell-shocked. I do have a brain between these overlarge ears,” Merlin said and Arthur snapped back to see that the bartender looked a little uncomfortable.  
  
“It’s your question,” Arthur pointed out, forcing the look of astonishment off his face.   
  
“Right, it is, isn’t it,” Merlin’s face became very serious and Arthur worried that maybe the game had gone on too long. He waited for the question, shifting a little in his seat, and swallowing slightly. He was not entirely sure what it was he was dreading, but the way Merlin’s blue eyes drilled into him, he was dreading something.  
  
“Have you come out to your dad?” Merlin asked eventually and Arthur just shook his head. “Your turn,” Merlin switched the conversation quickly. Arthur wondered how he had learnt to read people so well. He took a long drink of his beer before he spoke again.  
  
“Favourite television show?” he asked and Merlin’s face crept into a smile again.  
  
“British or American?” he asked again.  
  
“Both,” Arthur decided with a shrug.  
  
“British? Doctor Who, hands down. American? It’s a toss up between Heroes and Numb3rs. What about you?” But Arthur did not get a chance to reply as his mobile rang.   
  
He pulled it out of his pocket with an apologetic smile at Merlin who shrugged.  
  
“Arthur?” Morgana's voice asked as soon as he answered.   
  
“Morgana,” he grimaced and Merlin smirked a little before slipping away to serve a group of people nearby.  
  
“How’s it going?” she asked, “do you like him?” It took Arthur a moment to remember who she was talking about.   
  
“Lancelot?” he said stupidly.  
  
“Of course Lancelot,” she snapped back, as though he was a complete idiot, and he probably was, because all thoughts of his disastrous date had disappeared from his mind. He had heard bartenders called untrained counsellors somewhere, and Merlin definitely fitted into that category. He looked down to where the dark haired man was bantering with his new customers and was rewarded with a blinding smile as Merlin glanced his way.   
  
“Right… that,” he said, and he could hear Morgana waiting on the other end of the line. Only she could make waiting an active thing. “Not that well.”  
  
“You don’t like him?” she asked, sounding crestfallen.   
  
“Not as much as he liked someone else,” he replied pragmatically. She would no doubt get worked up enough for the two of them. She always did. In Morgana’s mind the only person allowed to undermine Arthur’s self worth and make cutting remarks about him was her. If anyone else tried it, it was cruel and prompted her to verbally destroy them.  
  
“What?!” she yelled, and he almost jerked his phone away from his ear. He could hear Owain asking her what was wrong in the background, but she ignored him. “He went off with some other guy, on  _your_  date?”  
  
“Actually,” Arthur said, enjoying himself now, “he went off with the barmaid.” She had no reply for that, and he could hear her spluttering in the background. “Which was fine, I don’t mind.”  
  
“That’s not the point,” she told him, clearly irritated that he was not showing the right amount of sorrow or anger over the situation. “He was on a date with  _you_.” She paused for a second as though she was working something out. “Look, if that happened, why haven’t you come back? You’re not trying to drink it away are you?”  
  
“Morgana, I’m fine.” He said in a flat voice, wishing she would just get off the phone already. He had given her the update and he was well able to take care of himself.  
  
“It’s not a good idea to get drunk alone, Arthur. Come back and we’ll break out the vodka and get pissed together.” Arthur grimaced; he hated vodka, she knew that, and he did not need to get drunk right then. He had a busy weekend ahead and he needed to  _not_  be suffering from the hangover to end all hangovers.  
  
“Morgana…” he began again, but she cut him off before he could decline her invitation.  
  
“Come back now, or I’m sending Owain to come and get you,” she said and Arthur just had time to hear Owain beginning to protest before she hung up on him. The words he had been about to say caught in his mouth and he was left stuck in the middle of two conversations, neither of which he could finish. He looked around quickly and saw Merlin serving another large group of people about as far away from Arthur as he could get. He would take forever to get through them, and Morgana was definitely not kidding when she said she would send Owain. He glared into thin air before noticing the beer mat in front of him.  
  
He patted down the pockets of his jacket until he found a long thin lump and fished the biro out, hoping it had enough ink, and reached for the beer mat. With a look at Merlin he tried and failed to catch the other man’s eye and chose instead to simply scrawl down a few words on the mat before standing and walking to the door.  
  
He forced himself not to look back to see if Merlin had noticed, and braced himself for the cold as he pushed the door open. He was not expecting the rain though, and he swore as the wetness hit him in the face. He was lucky that his flat was less than a five minute walk away and he would probably still be soaked to the bone by the time he reached the door.  
  
Cursing the weather, he set off to trudge back up the road, his mind emphatically  _not_  on whether Merlin had found his note yet.  
  
***  
  
“Is it raining?” Morgana asked as he walked through the door. He just glared at her. She had interrupted a perfectly nice drink, made him walk home through the pelting rain and had, incidentally, been behind the whole debacle in the first place.  
  
“Whatever gave you that idea?” he asked, shrugging off his jacket, which dribbled water onto the floor in several constant trickles. Owain waved a welcome and offered him a can of Strongbow, which he declined. “I’ve had enough, thanks,” which made Morgana look at him disapprovingly.  
  
“So, he stood you up for the  _barmaid_?” she asked, her voice icy cold. Arthur nodded with a slight shrug, trying to convey that he was perfectly fine with the situation and had managed to salvage his evening a little, even. “What did you do?”  
  
“I didn’t do anything!” he snapped back. “Look, it was a blind date. He liked someone else. It happens all the time. Why do you automatically assume I did something?”  
  
“Because you usually do,” she replied.  
  
“I tried, it didn’t work,” he said, storming towards his room, partially because he needed to get away from her and partially because the feeling of sodden cloth plastered to his skin, and water trickling down his hair and across his forehead was decidedly unpleasant.  
  
“And that’s all you’re going to say?” she asked. He didn’t even answer her, just shut the door in her face.  
  
Five minutes, a new set of clothes and a quick pass of his towel over his head later, he was feeling a little more alive, but still not up to talking to Morgana. So, instead of emerging from his room, Arthur just settled down at his computer, checking his email and going over the work he was planning to do at the weekend. He lost track of time, fiddling around with an essay plan and did not even notice the clock until he began to yawn widely at one o’clock in the morning.  
  
He settled down in his bed, struggling to ignore the fact that Morgana, with her impeccable timing, had chosen to go to bed with Owain right then. He was unable to wipe the smile off his face, although he would have been hard pressed to tell anyone who asked why he was smiling. It had not been a good date, it had barely made it to an okay day, but he still felt curiously content.  
  
***


	4. Part the Fourth: in which Arthur is oblivious, Merlin has legs and Morgana has to find somewhere else to sleep

Arthur mused to himself, when he walked through the door to see Morgana looking at him with her usual ‘I want something that you’re going to hate’ expression, that living with her at least kept him on his toes. He never knew what she was going to come out with next, whether it was trying to get him to aid her in some drive for charity, or to suffer through an hour’s walk because there was a place just down the road (read three miles away) that she had heard sold the best chocolate brownies in the entire county and Owain was busy.  
  
“What is it?” he asked, before she could even get a word out.   
  
“Look, you know I wouldn’t ask,” she began and he sighed, immediately filing it under ‘humiliating and possibly degrading’ in his mind. “But, Julie dropped out and we really need to find someone else, because Owain’s mother decided that he had to go back home for his father’s birthday and, if I’m left alone with Nimueh and Luke again, then I think I’m going to scream.” She took a breath and waited expectantly. It took Arthur a long moment to realise that he was supposed to be answering a question that she had not asked.  
  
“Morgana, you’re going to have to tell me what you want me to do before I refuse.”  
  
“Arthur! You can’t refuse! Please, for me?” she begged him, resorting to the puppy dog eyes that had always got her her own way when they were younger). “Nimueh and Luke are  _insufferable_  and she’s a vicious little bitch when she wants to be, and she has this way of talking to me like I’m somehow pathetic, or three years old. You’ve got to come.”  
  
“I thought Nimueh was your friend,” he said.  
  
“No, Luke’s my friend, I only put up with Nimueh because he refuses to see how horrible she is,” Morgana promptly replied. “We’ve been telling him since he met her that he should just walk away, but the sex must be really good because he’s such a  _doormat_  when it comes to her.” Arthur racked his brains in a valiant attempt to remember the couple. Nimueh he recalled was chillingly beautiful in a similar way to Morgana. Both had the strange ethereal perfection of a portrait, untouchable and cold, but where Morgana often seemed to be laughing at the world, Nimueh only ever seemed to regard it as something to be controlled.   
  
“Right…” he said, wondering why on earth he would want to spend an evening with her and her trophy boyfriend. As far as he was aware Luke was nice, but exasperatingly dumb when it came to anything that did not involve quantum mechanics. “So, where are you going?”  
  
“The pub quiz, up the road at The Dragon,” she said. “They always have one on Wednesdays and Owain and Julie thought it would be fun to go.” She paused. “Of course, now neither of them is here and I’m stuck playing third wheel to the bitch queen of the west and her little dog too.” Arthur smirked at the image. “Please Arthur.”  
  
He considered it for a moment. He had no work due in for another two weeks, Morgana had not yet brought up the idea of another blind date; he thought she might still be convinced he was getting over the last one, but knew better than to say anything. The Dragon was a decent pub, he liked the beer and it was a reasonable price. Admittedly, he was terrible at pub quizzes, but it beat having to cook on his own and eat by himself at the small table.  
  
“Fine.”  
  
“It would just be for…” Morgana blinked as her brain caught up with her ears. “Fine?”  
  
“Yes,” he said with a shrug, “I’ll come.”  
  
“Just like that?” she asked again, leaning towards him and looking him up and down carefully. “Are you sure you’re alright?”  
  
“Yes, I just don’t feel like sticking around here all by myself and you’ll owe me a favour anyway.” He told her, a little unnerved by how she was staring at him. It was not the first time he had agreed to one of her plans. The first time in a while, perhaps, but it certainly did not deserve quite that level of scrutiny.  
  
“I’ll owe you more than one,” his sister said, still looking a little confused. “It starts at seven thirty; they’re meeting us there at quarter past.” He nodded. That gave him enough time to check that he had done all the work for tomorrow’s tutorial and grab something to eat. “I’ve made some food,” she volunteered, and he smiled at her, pushing through into the kitchen.  
  
“Thanks,” he said, looking at the curry on the table, but his gratitude only served to make her look more suspicious.  
  
“Thank you,” she said, finally, before sitting opposite him and beginning to eat, still looking bemused.  
  
***  
  
Quiz night at The Dragon was apparently quite popular if the throngs of people were anything to go by. Morgana gave a strained smile as she spotted Nimueh and Luke in the corner, waving to them and Arthur breathed a sigh of resignation.  
  
“You chose to come,” Morgana reminded him under her breath, and he could not really respond to that. He had condemned himself, but that did not make the evening any more palatable. “We’ll sit down and say hello, then I’ll go and get some drinks.”  
  
“I can get them,” Arthur said but Morgana stared at him like that was a stupid idea.  
  
“What if it’s the barmaid from last time?” she asked, and Arthur opened his mouth to protest, but they were already at the table.  
  
“Morgana,” Nimueh said, giving an arch smile. Beside her Luke smiled like a good natured puppy. “I’m so glad you could make it. How’s Owain?”  
  
“He’s fine,” Morgana assured her, “you remember my brother Arthur?” Arthur offered his hand which Nimueh took with the same expression of someone cleaning a drain. Of course she remembered him, as far as Arthur knew he was the only man who had ever turned her down. They had first met at his and Morgana’s flat warming party. Luke had been away somewhere and Nimueh had practically thrown herself at him. Not only that, she had treated it like some sort of privilege. He had disabused her of the notion quickly and he knew Morgana had informed her that he was gay no short time after that.   
  
He smiled politely still, trying to ignore the memory. Some things he tried to erase from his mind as best as he could, but somehow they stuck with him.  
  
“Morgana what would you like to drink?” he said as Morgana sat down. She looked up at him with a glare, a combination of irritation at his inability to do as she said, and a desire not to be left alone with the other two.  
  
“I’ll go,” she said, making to stand up again, but Nimueh grasped her elbow in sharp thin fingers.  
  
“Don’t be silly, Morgana,” she said. “We should talk. Let him get them.” Arthur smiled.  
  
“A glass of white wine, please,” Morgana said grudgingly. He nodded and headed off to the crowded bar, wondering if Merlin would be on tonight.  
  
He was not disappointed. As the crowd in front of him parted for a moment he saw a familiar mop of dark hair and a flash of a huge grin before it disappeared between people’s shoulders again.  
  
It took a good two minutes to get within serving distance and he waited, feeling slightly uncomfortable for some reason. He did not know whether Merlin had got the note he had scribbled down last Friday, but he had no reason to worry either way, it had just been an answer to a stupid question.  
  
It might have been his imagination, but when he caught Merlin’s eye he could have sworn the man’s grin grew infinitesimally larger.  
  
“Arthur,” he said amicably. “Here for the quiz?” he said, his hands grabbing a pint glass and going to the tap before Arthur had even asked.   
  
“I suppose so,” he said, watching as his pint was placed in front of him. “Can I have a glass of white wine as well, please?” Merlin blinked but nodded.   
  
“Any preference?” Merlin asked and Arthur shrugged.  
  
“Just the house white?” he said and Merlin nodded again.  
  
“Your sister organised a blind date to a quiz?” the bartender asked as he found a wine bottle and poured out a glass.   
  
“No,” Arthur replied with a laugh, “I’m just here to make up numbers.”  
  
“Then I take it the wine is for Morgana,” Merlin said, offering it to him before asking for the money. Arthur nodded and handed over cash. “Good luck, the questions tend to be difficult.”  
  
“We won’t need luck,” Arthur told him jokingly.  
  
“And you say you’re not arrogant,” Merlin retorted, handing over his change. “See you later,” he added before running off to serve the next punter.  
  
Arthur sighed before turning to walk back to his table.  
  
Morgana’s face was strained when he returned and he dropped into the chair next to her as noisily as he could to draw Nimueh’s attention. He handed her wine to her and received a grateful smile in return. He pasted on a polite smile and proceeded to begin two of the longest hours of his life.  
  
***  
  
Merlin had not been lying, the quiz was difficult. Half the questions were impossible if you had not studied the exact subject that they were on for most of your life, or possibly memorised an encyclopaedia. Of course, the fact that no one knew the answers led to more arguments about what to put down between Nimueh and Morgana than he had been expecting. His suggestion of just putting down Sir Gawain or Mary Poppins for all the answers they did not know was met with disdain from both sides.   
  
There were a few answers he knew though, and every time he got an answer right Nimueh regarded him with a look of complete astonishment.   
  
She had just begun to slide from snide to downright bitchy when a familiar voice greeted him and he looked up with relief to see Merlin reaching for his empty glass.  
  
“Hey,” he said, taking a deep breath, noticing Morgana looking between the pair of them with interest. “So you do come out from behind the bar,” Merlin gave a laughing affirmative.  
  
“Only when I’ve been on my best behaviour,” he replied.  
  
“Then I feel honoured to have witnessed this rare occasion,” Arthur responded and was rewarded with another chuckle.   
  
“Arthur?” Morgana said, clearly hinting that she wanted to know what was going on – now. But before he could introduce the pair of them, he was beaten to it.  
  
“You must be Morgana,” Merlin said, resting his tray against the table and holding out a hand, which she took, shock etched into her features. Arthur could barely suppress his amusement merely at the expression of her face. It took a lot to shock Morgana. “I’m Merlin.”  
  
“It’s nice to meet you, Merlin,” Morgana said, shooting another vicious glance in Arthur’s direction and he knew that he was going to pay for this later. Morgana seemed to believe that he should have told her about Merlin, not that there was anything to tell. “You work here?”  
  
“Yeah,” Merlin told her, “for my sins… and my bank balance, which might as well be the same thing.” He turned to lift up the tray again and dropped a small stack of beer mats on the table. “I’d stay and chat, but it’s really busy,” he smiled at Nimueh’s ice cold glare which suggested that he really should be leaving, right now. “See you later, Arthur, Morgana.” Arthur nodded a goodbye and watched him walk away.  
  
“Now I understand,” Morgana said as soon as he turned back to her.  
  
“Understand what?” Arthur asked in confusion.  
  
“Why you were so eager to come tonight,” she replied with a smile. Across the table Nimueh had a face that would probably haunt Arthur’s nightmares for weeks. “And why you came back from getting our drinks with a huge grin on your face. And why you weren’t bothered by what happened on those dates.”  
  
“I wasn’t eager to come tonight,” he protested.  
  
“You didn’t argue – for you, that’s eager.” She said, smiling smugly like she had learnt the answer to life, the universe and everything and it wasn’t forty-two, but something to do with Merlin.  
  
“I don’t know what you mean,” he said honestly, but he had a sneaking suspicion that she was right.  
  
“Of course you don’t,” she said raising her hands in exasperation, “you’re male, and oblivious.”  
  
“Morgana,” he said, his voice low. He knew when she was going to be impossible about something.  
  
“You are such an idiot.” She reached out for one of the beer mats for her glass of wine and looked down at it curiously.  
  
“Red?” she said to no one in particular. Arthur followed her line of sight down to the word scrawled on the beer mat. He blinked and laughed abruptly. She stared at him.  
  
“What?” she asked. Opposite them Nimueh was glaring still, unimpressed by their antics and the fact that he knew one of the serving staff. She did not approve of homosexuality, Morgana had told him in an icy voice before the had set off, and given that her expression could be used to strip paint, she probably thought they were rubbing her nose in it.  
  
“He got it,” Arthur said, more to himself than to her, he pulled the mat out from under her glass, much to her puzzlement.  
  
“Who got what?” she asked. “Merlin?” But Arthur did not answer, just turned the beer mat over. There was nothing on the other side and his shoulders sagged. “Arthur, what is it?”  
  
“Something we were doing on Friday,” he said.  
  
“You and Merlin?” Morgana asked, and there was an undercurrent to her voice that Arthur did not recognise.   
  
“Yes, one of us asked a question, then the other one. After you phoned I left him a question on a beer mat.”  
  
“And this is his answer?” she asked, looking down at the reply with dawning comprehension. “Did you ask him what his favourite colour was?” Arthur nodded, feeling more than a little embarrassed.  
  
“I couldn’t think of anything else…” he said defensively, feeling less and less comfortable as her lips curved into an amused smile.   
  
“What’s his question?” she asked, pulling the mat over to her and flipping it over once more. “There’s nothing here.” Arthur shrugged.  
  
“Well, it’s not like we can continue, is it? He’s just finishing it up,” she stared at him for a moment.   
  
“By delivering his answer to you in the same way you left it for him?” she asked. “You know, if you’d told me you had met someone else, I would have understood.” Arthur stared at her without understanding.  
  
“What… I didn’t meet anyone,” he said.  
  
“Merlin?” she replied.  
  
“I met him the week before. It’s just a game, Morgana.” She did not look convinced.  
  
“You met him two weeks ago?” she asked, “and you didn’t tell me?”  
  
“One and a half weeks ago, and what’s the big deal?” Morgana gaped at him, her usual composure completely gone before her expression changed to one of enraged incredulity.  
  
“I can’t believe you are that much of an idiot!” she said.  
  
“Shh!” Nimueh hissed. “The next round’s starting.” And that put an end to that. Morgana maintained stony silence towards him for the next half hour until she got so exasperated that she went to get another drink and left him alone with the other two. Luke gave him a tired smile, but Nimueh was never going to soften.  
  
The strained silence reigned for a good few minutes before Morgana returned, looking a lot less unhappy. She sat down quietly and slid a new drink over to Arthur as well. He offered her a smile, which she returned, and the tension was clear, well, the tension between them at least. Nimueh was still glaring at them and no sooner had Morgana sat down than she began to worry about her health because of how ill she looked.   
  
Morgana replied acidly, turning every insult on its head in a way that Arthur found quite enjoyable to watch. By the end of the conversation, it was not Morgana who was not looking after herself, but Nimueh who was not putting enough effort into her work and who was insecure in her own relationship. His sister took a tiny sip of her wine and slid it back onto the table, nudging the pile of beer mats so that they spilled towards him.  
  
With a lack of anything better to do – the answers about to be read out – he began to fiddle with them, stacking them up and making beer mat houses out of them, which inevitably crashed down around his fingers. Morgana was watching him with eagle-eyed curiosity as he began to stack them up again and it was then that it caught his eye. Sticking out, the next to bottom mat had the curl of a biro line just about visible.  
  
Slowly he pulled it out.  
  
 _What’s your phone number?_  was scrawled across it in untidy handwriting. He stared at the question in complete incomprehension for a moment, before looking up at Morgana who was smiling slightly, but not looking at him. He could hear the answers being called out and he knew that they had done miserably. Thought that did not really seem the point right now, even if Nimueh was grumbling about it.   
  
He looked around and saw Merlin at the bar, leaning on the counter and talking to Gwen. As he looked across, Merlin turned back to him and started slightly as their gazes met, before giving a lopsided smile that looked a little scared. Arthur smiled back, still a little shell-shocked by the whole thing, before turning away and looking down at the mat again.  
  
“Told you that you were an idiot,” Morgana whispered, bringing her mouth close to his ear.   
  
“I didn’t think…” he said, and she rolled her eyes.  
  
“You never do. Now go over there and give the poor boy your number,” she insisted. He just sat there stupidly staring at the beer mat. “He’s been waiting for you to find it for about an hour now. He probably thinks you don’t want to.”  
  
“But…” Arthur began and she glared at him.   
  
“Arthur,” she said firmly, and he knew that he was not getting out of this, and to be honest with himself he did not really want to. He stood up and grabbed the empty glasses just as Nimueh decided that it was all Morgana’s fault that they had lost. He left their arguments behind him and headed for the bar again, a little nervously, he admitted to himself.  
  
“Hi,” he said as he put the glasses down on the counter with a series of clinks and Merlin walked over to him. Everyone else was sitting at their tables commiserating over their losses or celebrating their success, so they were pretty much alone at the bar, apart from Gwen who was pretending not to be paying attention to them. Arthur gave her a small smile, and wondered how she and Lancelot were getting on, but his thoughts were cut off when Merlin started speaking.  
  
“Did you… I mean, it’s okay if you don’t want to,” Merlin said, wining the prize for the vaguest sentence of the night. “I mean, I wouldn’t want to give my number out to a complete stranger.”  
  
“You’re not a  _complete_  stranger,” Arthur said with a smirk and Merlin seemed to breathe for the first time since Arthur had come up to the bar.   
  
“No one could be stranger than you,” the dark hair bartender said with a sudden smile that made Arthur’s smirk grow. “So… What do you think?”  
  
“It’s not your turn,” he said, “give me your phone.” Merlin blinked and then handed it over, watching as Arthur punched in his number, his mouth open in vague confusion.   
  
“Are you putting your  _real_  number in?” he asked.  
  
“It’s still not your turn,” was all Arthur said as he handed the mobile back, grinning wickedly.  
  
“So what’s your question?” Merlin asked.  
  
“Men or women?” Arthur said and Merlin laughed, his grin returning full force as he looked at his phone screen.  
  
“I would have thought that was obvious,” he replied.  
  
“Morgana says I’m an idiot,” Arthur told him, jerking his thumb back over his shoulder to where his sister was no doubt watching them intently.  
  
“She’s a smart woman,” Merlin replied. “My turn.”  
  
“But you didn’t answer my question,” Arthur protested. Merlin ignored him.  
  
“As we discussed on Friday, I haven’t had enough of a chance to judge whether you really are terribly at dates, or whether it was just coincidence,” he began, leaning across the bar, crossing his arms over the wooden surface. “Clearly this means I need to do more research.”  
  
“Clearly,” Arthur agreed.  
  
“So, in the interests of science,” Merlin continued. Arthur watched him carefully, feeling his face crease into that stupid smile again, Merlin’s eyes were brilliant blue as they stared at each other intensely and his smirk was firmly in place. “I feel that I have to ask you, Arthur Pendragon, whether you would like to go for a drink with me some time.” Arthur laughed and leant forward himself so that their faces were inches apart.   
  
“In the interests of science,” he said slowly, “I think that would have to be a yes.”  
  
“Your turn,” Merlin said, his voice low and his eyes flickering down to Arthur’s lips.  
  
“What time do you get off work?” Arthur asked.  
  
“Give me half an hour,” Merlin replied, and Arthur could have sworn that their faces were getting closer together. “My turn…” Arthur nodded. “Where do you want to go?”  
  
“My place?” he suggested, “I can probably kick Morgana out for a while. She owes me one for coming tonight.”  
  
“So,” Merlin pulled back across the bar, his eyes sparkling with amusement as Arthur blinked in disorientation at the sudden change of perspective. “Half an hour?”  
  
“See you then,” Arthur said, turning to walk away.  
  
***  
  
It had been easy to convince Morgana that she should find a friend to stay the night with. She slipped home to grab some stuff while Arthur was waiting, impatiently and a little nervously, not that he would admit that, for Merlin to finish up his shift. She gave him a wicked smile and told him to be safe before winking at Merlin and walking out of the Dragon. Nimueh and Luke had already rushed off somewhere, not that Arthur really gave a damn about them.  
  
At least it was not raining, he thought to himself as he leant against the wall next to the staff entrance, where Merlin had directed him.  
  
“Hi,” he jumped as Merlin materialised beside him. He had not even noticed him opening the door. “You alright?”  
  
“You mean since the last time you saw me two minutes ago?” Arthur asked, raising an eyebrow.  
  
“A lot can happen in two minutes,” Merlin said, looking at his face carefully, before smiling. He walked in front of Arthur and stared at him for a moment before leaning forward suddenly to push their lips together. It was sudden, but Arthur had almost been expecting it, and his hand came up of their own volition to pull Merlin closer to him, their lips being crushed between two sets of teeth.   
  
He opened his mouth almost experimentally, and Merlin wasted no time in mimicking the movement, their tongues sliding past each other, running against lips and teeth and the bridge of the other’s mouth. Arthur turned them round abruptly so that Merlin was the one with his back against the wall and Arthur was pressing him into the brickwork, one hand braced against the wall as the other ran down Merlin’s chest.  
  
They pulled away reluctantly a few seconds later, both of them out of breath.  
  
“You have no idea how long I’ve been longing to do that,” Merlin whispered, reaching up one hand to brush his fingers against Arthur’s lips, and he shivered a little at the touch.  
  
“You live nearby?” Merlin asked him, breathlessly. His eyes were dazed, his pale cheeks were flushed and swollen red lips stood out against the whiteness of his skin.  
  
“Just up the road…” Arthur said, not drawing back too far. He was reluctant to pull away entirely, as though the heat between them would be lost forever.   
  
They managed to get to Arthur’s flat, though he was not entirely sure how. He couldn’t seem to take his hands off Merlin and they were laughing and insulting each other the whole way. Merlin apparently agreed with Morgana that Arthur was completely oblivious.  
  
“I was considering whacking you over your over-sized head with your stupid pint glass, you oaf,” he said between snogging sessions as they were coming to the door. His hands were trailing down Arthur’s back, and distracting him from the  _very important_  task of finding his keys, which he told Merlin in a firm tone. His only response was a laugh and Merlin pulling his body closer so that his back was pressed against Merlin’s front so he could feel the vibration of Merlin’s ribcage with laughter, and the heat of his arousal further down. He gasped and dropped the keys just as he had managed to fish them out of his pocket. He bent over to get them and Merlin whistled at the view with another bout of laughter.  
  
“That arse is wasted on an arse like you,” he commented.  
  
“And those hands are wasted on a bumbling idiot like you,” he retorted managing to get the key into the lock somehow and turning it. The door swung open and Merlin was pushing him inside, his hands seemingly everywhere. One of them managed to kick the door closed again but Arthur would never know which one because he was pushing Merlin back against the wall again, and the only sign he had of its closing was the  _thud-click_  of the lock slipping into place.  
  
“Too quick?” Merlin panted against his neck before he sucked a line down to Arthur’s shoulder. Arthur laughed and began to fumble with the hem of Merlin’s t-shirt, pulling it upwards. He could feel Merlin’s grin against the crook of his neck.   
  
“Well,” Arthur said, pushing his fingers up under Merlin’s t-shirt and running them over his bare skin. “The way I see it, this is our third date already.”  
  
“I think they only count as dates if both parties know that they’re dates,” Merlin told him, grabbing Arthur’s jacket and tugging it off his shoulders. “And you weren’t exactly paying attention were you?” Arthur paused, and drew back to look at him, pulling against Merlin’s grip.  
  
“You mean  _you_  knew they were dates?” he asked. Merlin just shrugged.  
  
“There was alcohol; we got to know each other…” he pointed out. “But you didn’t really catch on.”  
  
“I thought we already established that I was crap at dates,” Arthur asked, and, seeing Merlin leaning heavily against the wall, his hair messier than ever, his smug grin teasing him, he couldn’t resist the urge to lean in and kiss him again. And the moment their lips met it was different from the frenzy and frantic nature of what had come before. It made his entire body heat up to a temperature where he wasn’t sure why he had not spontaneously combusted. He knew that Merlin could taste the beer on his tongue and he could taste a faint hint of mint on Merlin’s and everything was suddenly, and blindingly clear.  
  
“You’re quite good at this one,” Merlin told him as they stopped to stare at each other for another long moment, hands finding their ways back to hems and buttons. “Although it has only just begun.”  
  
“Then it can only get better,” Arthur said, backing up and pulling Merlin, by the hem of his t-shirt towards his room.  
  
“Very sure of yourself, aren’t you Mr I’m-so-perfect,” Merlin said, smiling slyly while he followed willingly.   
  
“All those insults were  _come ons_?” Arthur asked in amazement, pausing. Merlin laughed, his voice lower than usual.  
  
“It’s okay,” he said reaching out to ruffle Arthur’s hair, already mussed by their earlier activities. “You caught on in the end, even if you are a bit slow.” The dark haired man walked past him into Arthur’s room and then stood in the doorway, looking back at him. “So, Mr Slow-coach, are you coming or not?”  
  
Arthur shook his head and strode towards him, grabbing him by the shoulders and pushing Merlin back into the room until his legs hit the bed and they both fell in a tumble of limbs. The door swung shut behind them as Arthur dragged Merlin’s t-shirt over his head and then traced his hands along the bartender’s torso, watching the expressions on Merlin’s face as he did so.  
  
He brought his mouth down experimentally onto one nipple and was rewarded with a shuddering groan of pleasure from the man beneath him. Nimble fingers made quick work of the buttons on his shirt and soon that too was sliding off his arms, and he tossed it onto the floor without taking his eyes away from Merlin’s.  
  
“So, you think you’re good at this then?” Merlin asked him.  
  
“I don’t think, I  _know_ ,” Arthur replied tartly, slipping one hand down between them to glide over the front of Merlin’s trousers. “But if you want to stop…” he pulled the hand away and laughed as Merlin reached out for him and thrust his hips up. “I didn’t think so…”  
  
“At least you catch on to some things quick,” Merlin breathed as he tugged Arthur back to him and watched the blond head work its way down his chest, biting and licking from his throat to his navel. “I did worry that your brain had been replaced by solid bone.” He yelped as Arthur bit down a little harder than before before gently sucking at him.  
  
“You know, you could have made it more obvious,” Arthur murmured into Merlin’s stomach, making his entire abdomen vibrate with his voice. He could feel Merlin’s cock at his chest, straining against the material of Merlin’s trousers and he laughed a little, enjoying how the vibration of his rib cage made Merlin moan. “If you’d just said something instead of trying to be mysterious and interesting… which really doesn’t suit you.”  
  
“You would have fobbed me off and run for the hills,” Merlin pointed out. Arthur crawled back up his body with a predatory gleam in his eye and he could feel Merlin shiver beneath him, though the room seemed to be baking hot. Merlin’s hands hooked into the waistband of his jeans, finding the button and working down the zip. “Off,” he breathed into Arthur’s hair and the young man pulled away stripping his trousers and underwear off until he was completely naked. “Can follow simple instructions,” Merlin said with a chuckle after a small pause, “one day you might even be able to work in the real world.” His hands tumbled down his body to begin undoing his own trousers when Arthur batted them away, impatiently. “Even… shows… initiative,” Merlin let out between gasps for breath as Arthur’s fingers and his hot breath reached his cock. Then he lost the ability to speak for a moment as Arthur’s mouth descended on him.  
  
All Arthur could hear, other than the pounding of his blood, was Merlin’s nonverbal moaning as he traced his tongue up and down. It was more than enough to put a smirk on his face, though it was a little difficult to smirk when his mouth was otherwise occupied.   
  
“God… Arthur,” Merlin said, clutching at his hair and thrusting further into his mouth. Arthur grabbed his hips firmly, almost tight enough to leave bruises, to stop the bucking that was threatening to choke him. He wanted to smile as Merlin descended into incoherency again and he withdrew for a minute to watch him. Merlin’s head was thrown back, his eyes tightly shut and his muscles seemed to undulate under his skin.  
  
He laughed as Merlin pulled his head up to look at him and glared as hard as he could.   
  
“Arthur,” he said, but the warning tone of his voice was overlaid with lust and Arthur just smiled. “Don’t you have better things to be doing?” He thrust his hips up deliberately and Arthur lowered his mouth once again flicking his tongue over the tip of Merlin’s dick and struggling not to laugh as Merlin’s next sentence of disapproval disintegrated into a long drawn out groan.  
  
Arthur sped up then, bringing one hand down to help, and increasing his rhythm. The bucking of Merlin’s hips became jerkier. Arthur pulled his mouth away and moved back up Merlin’s body to smash their lips together messily, his hand still pumping up and down as Merlin’s entire body tensed and he came between their bodies, Arthur swallowing his cries.  
  
After Merlin’s body sagged, Arthur pulled back, bracing himself over the other man and surveying his handiwork.  
  
“You look pleased with yourself,” Merlin murmured when he opened his eyes. Arthur just smiled at him, imagining that his grin must be as big as Merlin’s.  
  
“You look… good,” Arthur managed and Merlin reached a languorous arm up and round his shoulders to pull him in for another slow kiss, a lot more gentle than before, and his other hand slipped down between them and wrapped around Arthur’s own cock. He gasped at the first touch and Merlin smiled into his mouth, biting down gently on his lower lip and then massaging it with his tongue.  
  
Arthur did not take long, he had already been hard for a while and the feeling of Merlin’s hand on him was making it difficult to think straight or maintain any measure of control. He dug his fingers into Merlin’s shoulders and moved his mouth to his shoulder, biting down harder than he intended to as he felt his release coming closer until he was teetering on the edge. He felt Merlin roll them over until he was on the bottom, his shoulders pressing into the mattress, and he was grateful for the leverage, because his hips seemed to have taken on a life of their own and he was not sure whether he could stop them if he wanted to, not that he wanted to because the added friction as he pushed into Merlin’s hand and Merlin pushed down felt better than he remembered it having done before.  
  
Then he was falling over the edge and it all became a moot point really, because all he could feel was pleasure, and fireworks behind his eyes, and all he could hear was his own voice hoarsely calling Merlin’s name over and over again as though it was the only thing he knew.  
  
“Okay,” Merlin muttered into his ear as he flopped down next to him, one arm still draped over Arthur’s chest, the fingers tracing patterns Arthur couldn’t identify over the hair there. “Maybe you’re not  _terrible_  at dates. It could just be  _blind_  dates you have a problem with.”  
  
“Then the only solution I can see is never to go on another one,” Arthur said, enjoying the feeling of relaxation that had spread all over his body.  
  
“I think you might be right,” Merlin told him with a satisfied smile.  
  
***

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted at https://definewisdom.livejournal.com/15984.html


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